Many childless families take on the responsibility of pet ownership or have extensive contact with their nieces and nephews. Over half of all marriages end in divorce , and many of these individuals choose to get remarried.
This creates the step or blended family which involves two separate families merging into one new unit.
It consists of a new husband, wife, or spouse and their children from previous marriages or relationships. Stepfamilies are about as common as the nuclear family, although they tend to have unique challenges , such as adjustment periods and discipline issues.
Stepfamilies need to learn to work together and also work with their exes to ensure these family units run smoothly. Many grandparents today are raising their grandchildren for a variety of reasons. One in fourteen children is raised by their grandparents, and the parents are not present in the child's life.
This could be due to parents' death, addiction, abandonment or being unfit parents. Many grandparents need to go back to work or find additional sources of income to help raise their grandchildren.
There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to what is the best type of family structure. As long as a family is filled with love and support for one another, it tends to be successful and thrive. Families need to do what is best for each other and themselves, and that can be achieved in almost any unit. Family Structures The following types of families exist today, with some families naturally falling into multiple categories.
Nuclear Family The nuclear family is the traditional type of family structure. Single Parent Family The single parent family consists of one parent raising one or more children on his own. Extended Family The extended family structure consists of two or more adults who are related, either by blood or marriage, living in the same home. Childless Family While most people think of family as including children, there are couples who either cannot or choose not to have children.
Stepfamily Over half of all marriages end in divorce , and many of these individuals choose to get remarried. Grandparent Family Many grandparents today are raising their grandchildren for a variety of reasons. Variety of Structures There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to what is the best type of family structure.
By Kristin McCarthy. Exploring Nontraditional Family Structures. Pros and Cons of the Nuclear Family. By Michele Meleen. Definition of a Blended Family: Understanding the Dynamic. By Melissa Mayntz. What Is a Family Culture? Definition and Examples. By Patricia Lantz C. By Gabrielle Applebury. Definition of Extended Families.
List of Family Values. This kind of family is common where mothers do not have the resources to rear their children on their own, and especially where property is inherited. A matrifocal family consists of a mother and her children. Generally, these children are her biological offspring, although adoption of children is a practice in nearly every society. This kind of family is common where women have the resources to rear their children by themselves, or where men are more mobile than women.
Archaeologist Lewis Henry Morgan — performed the first survey of kinship terminologies in use around the world. Though much of his work is now considered dated, he argued that kinship terminologies reflect different sets of distinctions.
For example, most kinship terminologies distinguish between sexes the difference between a brother and a sister and between generations the difference between a child and a parent. Moreover, he argued, kinship terminologies distinguish between relatives by blood and marriage although recently some anthropologists have argued that many societies define kinship in terms other than "blood". Morgan made a distinction between kinship systems that use classificatory terminology and those that use descriptive terminology.
Morgan's distinction is widely misunderstood, even by contemporary anthropologists. Classificatory systems are generally and erroneously understood to be those that "class together" with a single term relatives who actually do not have the same type of relationship to ego. What defines "same type of relationship" under such definitions seems to be genealogical relationship. This is more than a bit problematic given that any genealogical description, no matter how standardized, employs words originating in a folk understanding of kinship.
What Morgan's terminology actually differentiates are those classificatory kinship systems that do not distinguish lineal and collateral relationships and those descriptive kinship systems which do. Morgan, a lawyer, came to make this distinction in an effort to understand Seneca inheritance practices. A Seneca man's effects were inherited by his sisters' children rather than by his own children. Most Western societies employ Eskimo kinship terminology.
This kinship terminology commonly occurs in societies based on conjugal or nuclear families, where nuclear families have a degree of relatively mobility. Such systems generally assume that the mother's husband has also served as the biological father. In some families, a woman may have children with more than one man or a man may have children with more than one woman. The system refers to a child who shares only one parent with another child as a "half-brother" or "half-sister".
For children who do not share biological or adoptive parents in common, English-speakers use the term "stepbrother" or "stepsister" to refer to their new relationship with each other when one of their biological parents marries one of the other child's biological parents.
Any person other than the biological parent of a child who marries the parent of that child becomes the "stepparent" of the child, either the "stepmother" or "stepfather". The same terms generally apply to children adopted into a family as to children born into the family. Typically, societies with conjugal families also favor neolocal residence; thus upon marriage a person separates from the nuclear family of their childhood family of orientation and forms a new nuclear family family of procreation.
However, in the western society the single parent family has been growing more accepted and has begun to truly make an impact on culture. The majority of single parent families are more commonly single mother families than single father.
These families face many difficult issues besides the fact that they have to raise their children on their own, but also have to deal with issues related to low income. Many single parents struggle with low incomes and find it hard to cope with other issues that they face including rent, child care, and other necessities required in maintaining a healthy and safe home.
Members of the nuclear families of members of one's own former nuclear family may class as lineal or as collateral. Kin who regard them as lineal refer to them in terms that build on the terms used within the nuclear family:.
An infant , his mother , his maternal grandmother , and his great-grandmother. For collateral relatives, more classificatory terms come into play, terms that do not build on the terms used within the nuclear family:. When additional generations intervene in other words, when one's collateral relatives belong to the same generation as one's grandparents or grandchildren , the prefix "grand" modifies these terms.
Although in casual usage in the USA a "grand aunt" is often referred to as a "great aunt", for instance. And as with grandparents and grandchildren, as more generations intervene the prefix becomes "great grand", adding an additional "great" for each additional generation.
Most collateral relatives have never had membership of the nuclear family of the members of one's own nuclear family. Cousins of an older generation in other words, one's parents' first cousins , though technically first cousins once removed, often get classified with "aunts" and "uncles". Similarly, a person may refer to close friends of one's parents as "aunt" or "uncle", or may refer to close friends as "brother" or "sister", using the practice of fictive kinship.
The mother and father of one's spouse become one's mother-in-law and father-in-law; the female spouse of one's child becomes one's daughter-in-law and the male spouse of one's child becomes one's son-in-law. The term " Sister-in-law " refers to three essentially different relationships, either the wife of one's sibling, or the sister of one's spouse, or the wife of one's spouse's sibling. No special terms exist for the rest of one's spouse's family.
The terms "half-brother" and "half-sister" indicate siblings who share only one biological or adoptive parent.
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